3. Socrates and the Socratic TurnSocrates was an actual historical person and he lives from roughly the year 469BCE and he is executed in the year 399BCE. Unfortunately Socrates is one of these characters in history who never writes anything of his own. We have reports that Socrates was anti-writing and he argued that once you write something down, you no longer need to remember it, so your memory will become worse if you depend on these external devices. For Socrates it is important that we keep the oral tradition alive. But this clouds the issue because we have no direct evidence of what Socrates himself thought and instead we have other historical sources which depict aspects of the character of Socrates. Chief among these is Plato, who was the student of Socrates and wrote many dialogues in which Socrates features as the main character and these more than likely would have been written after the death of the historical Socrates. Plato also wrote essays but those have become lost to us through history, so even though they are mentioned in other places, we don't have any of the actual texts. We have these dialogues which were written for popular audiences. It's not clear which of these dialogues represent the actual historical Socrates and which represent Plato's own development of these views where he is using Socrates as a character. Scholars debate this and there is a dispute about the right way to characterise what we know about Socrates. When I was learning his stuff a long time ago in graduate school, was that you could kind of tell by looking at the individual dialogues and trying to figure out what the psychology of the Socrates character was. So there is one set of dialogues where the Socrates character ends the conversation and where things are up in the air. Socrates never claims to have any knowledge, he's always seeking after it. There's a kind of unsettled ending at the end of the discussion where they simply have identified a problem and are not very clear about the way to solve it. Whereas later what you find in other dialogues, is a very different kind of Socrates. This kind of Socrates is one that has an answer and who wants to tell you about the theory he has developed. So it was argued that the first kind of Socrates is the historical person and the second kind of Socrates is Plato's version where he is developing his own views. That is not hard and fast and people disagree about it but that roughly the way that we will be presenting the material. And even if it isn't historically accurate, its organised much of the discussion about this topic. So keeping in mind that this is kind of a recreation of something that is controversial, lets go ahead and get started. So in this way of thinking about Socrates ...- He's not interested in questions about the nature of reality.

for example in part of one of the dialogues where Socrates is telling his audience about the time he came into contact with a particular pre-Socratic Greek philosopher named Anaxagoras (who we didn't discuss) who thinks that it was mind which was the ultimate cause and structure and fundamental element out of which everything else is made (in Greek nous) as opposed to water or fire or aperion. And the young Socrates is taken with this idea that mind orders the universe. so he goes to question Anaxagoras and Socrates reports that he is disappointed with the kind of answers that are given. they see mind as merely another mechanical principle. but they don't see what Socrates thinks is important which is looking for the explanation of things in terms of their purpose, why were they built. so what is going to be called their telos or function. He doesn't find that kind of explanation there and he is dissatisfied. so his interests run contrary to the interests of the pre-Socratics in this way. - Instead he asked questions about "the state of one's soul" eg

- what is courage?

-what does it mean to be a good person?

-what is justice?

-what is piety?

Notice that this set of questions is distinct from the questions of the pre-Socratic philosophers, he's not interested in what the fundamental stuff is he's interested more in the state of one's own soul. its important to understand what the average Greek person would of thought of as the meaning of the word soul

Socrates on the soul

the word simply meant the differentiating quality between things which were living and things which were not. so soul in the first instance as used in ancient Greece should be thought of as meaning some kind of spirit or mystic thing. there was a lot of debate about what the actual metaphysical nature of the soul was. Some of the philosophers were physicalists. some were dualists about the soul and Socrates himself was a dualist and thought the soul was non-physical and survives the death of the body. so saying there is a soul, is just saying that the thing is alive. there is no religious connotation like we have. we can more generally think that their concept of soul would be something like our concept of mind. Socrates claimed that the soul was non-physical and it was eternal, it could not be created or destroyed. as a non-physical item it was impervious to any kind of change. one very interesting argument he gives for the immortality of the soul is that he starts with the idea of the soul as the essence of life. now notice that would have just followed from the average Greek persons conception of what a soul was. so if that is the case that the soul is the essence of life, then that thing can never die because that is to admit that its opposite death could be found in the soul. so in this way Socrates is invoking a principle the pre-Socratic philosophers would have accepted so he can be seen as being continuous with the pre-Socratic views because he is adopting the basic axioms and the use of reason to analyse the human condition rather than the outer world. this characterises Socrates - a deep desire to get to the bottom of questions about the nature of ones self. So we can say that this is the first time that the human mind comes to be the target of philosophical inquiry.

Socrates II

- This is called 'the Socratic turn"

- symbolically: Socrates 'turning away' from nature and to the self or what we would call ethics or moral enquiry or the things that make us human as opposed to asking questions about the nature of the table. Socrates adds to that that you are not really living unless you engage in this kind of philosophical inquiry and critical self analysis.

- first time that the human mind and condition becomes the target of philosophical inquiry. examples:- no one knowingly does evil - so evil actions are ones that are done out of ignorance of what is really right and if the person had known what was really right they would not have performed the evil action. so Socrates has the view that humans are genuinely interested in dong what is right. that humans are at nature at bottom - good. but because of ignorance about what moral goodness is people are often misled into thinking that something that is actually immoral is in fact moral. so behind this view is the idea that moral properties are objective. that we can say some things are objectively right and some things are objectively wrong, not merely relative to a person's interest or their culture. - justice is not 'might makes right'. (this argument is in the first book of the republic)so "the Socratic turn" is taking this methodology that the pre-Socratic philosophers had developed and using it on a different set of questions. Ones that are more relevant to the day to day lives of human beings.Socrates is famous for saying at his own trial that the unexamined life is not worth living. Socrates thinks that the first questions should be about how to live our lives and whether the soul survives death. these are the questions that matter more than ones about tables and chairs and these are the questions we should ask. and we want as much as possible to have beliefs that correctly mirror the way reality is. and we cant achieve that goal unless we critically examine our beliefs. so Socrates wants to make sure that his beliefs are true, that he is not just accepting things that are told to him, but is instead interacting with each belief asking what is the answer to this question. so Socrates has in the background the picture that we are all aiming for what the good is, we have this as our goal, our purpose. we are trying to achieve this knowledge of the good, what really is objectively good in the world and until we do that we are not going to live lives which are happy. we might think we are happy but we are not really happy.

so one of the claims that Socrates wants to make is that its always better to suffer an injustice than to commit one and that would have been a very controversial claim. but it goes along with his other claim that you might think you are happy but you might not be. so take as an example a person who had wealth, fame etc but if they committed immoral actions in order to achieve that status then they weren't truly happy. and he often develops analogy with health. a healthy body is one that is functioning appropriately, where all the parts are working in the way they are supposed to be working and Socrates hints at a similar idea for the soul. a healthy soul is one that is functioning in the right way. and when you commit immoral actions you show evidence of a soul that is out of proportion in some way. so just like a person with a disfigured body cant live their "best possible" life, so too a person with a disfigured soul cant live their best life. so its always better to be the person who is committing the just act and receive an injustice than to perform one. Socrates makes the point that an unjust person can never truly harm a just person, because they are really only harming themselves because they are disfiguring their own soul. Before we actually talk about the Euthyphro (pronounced youth a frow) I want to give you some brief review about the story of the Socratic life. Socrates was notoriously not-attractive. He's described as having bug eyes and a snout nose. He didn't hold a job, he wouldn't take a shower, he wore the same clothes to bed as he wore out on the street, he spent all of his time in the market and would talk to anybody who would pass by. Remember the sophists who would only teach for money and people would try to offer money to Socrates to teach them and he would refuse them. He would hang around the marketplace and get into discussions about philosophy with anyone who happened to be around. He was well known for being intelligent although strange, and his conversations would draw crowds often, especially when the person he was talking to was well known. And you would want to see this because there is Socrates, this dishevelled mess, debating some important person and running circles around them. ultimately getting this person to the point where they would have to admit in public in front of a bunch of people that they no longer really knew the answer to the question. and then Socrates thought, well now we can begin. and he would try to draw out of the person the answer. And one of Socrates favourite methods was to claim that he did not know anything. he would say I don't know anything, you claim that you know something, so you tell me what you know. and then he would proceed to show them that it was wrong, and then they would say well I don't know anymore and then Socrates would say ah well now like a midwife now I can help you give birth to what you knew all along. and this is a theme that Plato will develop that knowledge is somehow innate, this is what's known as the doctrine of recollection. that when you learn something you're not really acquiring some new information but are remembering something you already knew. and there is a famous dialogue of Socrates where he takes an average person, a slave, and when I say slave think an uneducated person, a servant, someone who had never been taught geometry and didn't know how to read or write and Socrates was able to show that if you ask the right questions the student would give the right answers which shows that he did understand geometry even though no one had taught it to him. this is supposed to illustrate this basic idea that we have this prior knowledge that we were born with and we are trying to unearth that by careful reflection. this becomes a very influential idea. so then very famously someone goes to ask the oracle at Delphi who is the wisest person in Athens and the oracle responds that it is Socrates and this is supposed to be ironic because Socrates is famous for saying that he doesn't know anything. Socrates goes around telling many important people that they don't know what they are talking about. Socrates develops many enemies this way. Socrates was brought up on charges of corrupting the youth and also the charge of not believing in the gods of the state, Athena and Zeus etc because Socrates has told people that he hears a voice of like a guardian angel which sometime warns him not to do a certain thing. so these charges are kind of trumped up and Socrates goes to trial and gives his defence and the defence is famously called the apology but in Greek apology just means to defend not to say sorry. as his defence he presents some of these ideas we have been discussing. like the unexamined life is not worth living and he says the citizens of Athena have been living unexamined lives and sleepwalking through life. so he compares himself to a gadfly that bites a horse and makes the horse react and become active. so his defence is claiming that he has done something for the Athenian citizens, he's woken them up. he claims he did them a favour. this angers a lot of people and he loses the trial. they had hundreds of jurors in those days and he loses the trial by a very narrow margin and is convicted of corrupting the youth and believing in gods not of the state.

and then the second part of the trial begins where they consider sentencing. and they consider various sentences and what they want is for him to stop acting this way. and he is very defiant and says he won't quit. so they say well why not just go do this somewhere else, we can exile you and Socrates says no, he is an Athenian and has lived there his whole life and he is old. so they ask him what do you Socrates think should be your punishment, and its interesting what he says next. in the Greek society being a champion in the Olympics was about the highest honour you could have in the society and these champions were given anything they wanted and never had to pay for anything. so Socrates says that his punishment should be to be treated like a champion. so he is saying that instead of putting on the pedestal these physical beauties, you should prize those who engage in critical self reflection. and this just angers people to no end. they go away to vote and the judgement is no longer close, its overwhelmingly voted to sentence him to death. but no one really wants to kill Socrates, everyone is hoping that he will escape and so they set the execution for when the ship will come in at a certain time and they send him to a cell to wait. he goes there and has the discussion about the nature of the soul and whether you survive your death. his friends all come an offer money and have arranged to get him past the guard and into a boat waiting in the harbour. lets get you out of here. and Socrates gives a very famous argument that he cant leave the cell because it would be to commit an injustice against the city and against the laws. so he doesn't leave, he stays in prison, they bring him the fatal hemlock, he drinks the poison. this is a very moving portrait who profoundly believed in the things that they were saying. so that is to give you some context of the discussion with Euthyphro. Euthyphro

Euthyphro is a priest who is coming out of the court house as Socrates is going in. and Socrates says well if you know what being pious is maybe you could tell me because they have accused me of being impious. so euthyphro takes the bait and sets himself up for a big fall by saying he know what piety is. so Euthyphro says piety is doing what I'm doing. well what is he doing? it turns out that euthyphro is at the court to report this father for murder. and that is supposed t be a surprising thing for the ancient Greeks who were the intended audience of the story. because in ancient Greece it was very patriarchal and the head of the house was not someone who you reported on charges especially as the son. the duty of the son was to obey the parent. even more controversial, the person who euthyphro's father was alleged to have murdered was a slave and in fact the circumstances are very bizarre. so heres the story that Euthyphro tells. there are these two servants who get drunk and get into a fight. one of the servants murders the other servant. so euthyphro's father ties us the drunk servant and throws him in a ditch at the back of the property and sends someone into the town to get the local authorities. so by the time the authorities come the slave has been in the ditch overnight and has died from exposure and frozen to death. so euthyphro goes to court to file charges against his father for the murder of the slave. so Socrates says that is not what I'm talking about. what I'm interested in is a definition of what piety is rather than an example. a definition is a peculiar kind of thing for Socrates, a definition is a specification of what it is about the thing you're interested in that is essential to it. that is typically a question of what property distinguishes it from other things and in virtue of which having it is the reason for it being that kind of object. so a definition is what all the examples have in common and a further thing that having that thing is responsible for them being the kinds of things they are. so when Socrates wants to know what it means to be pious he wants something like what is it that every single pious actions shares and which is responsible for those actions being pious. so euthyphro says, oh ok well being pious is being loves by the gods. so Socrates says well there are many gods and some approve and others don't.

ok says euthyphro lets stipulate that the pious actions are what are loved by all the gods. and once you get passed polytheism and get to monotheism you can just say loved by the god. and in modern times this is translated into something which is known as the divine command theory. so if we switch to talking about things that are good or bad then divine command theory says things are good or bad are that way because god loves or commands those things.

Socrates objects that this way of thinking about moral properties cant be right. and his argument is that we cant just say what is right is what god loves because we haven't said why god loves that thing. and this leads to what is known as the euthyphro question because this is the question that Socrates asks in this point of the dialogue.

Euthyphro Question- does god command it because it is good, or is it good because he commands it?so Socrates thinks that the reason we call something good is because of the way that thing is already. so this seems to push us toward one of these answers.

intrinsic or relational properties

- male vs brother

-weight vs mass

if relational, then morality is completely arbitrary.

if it is right because god commands it then if god commanded us to kill children would it be morally permissible to do it? so if it is gods commands which "make" it wrong, then killing children would be ok. so its that god commands us not to do what is intrinsically wrong and he is a perfect judge of those things.

so moral properties are intrinsic. they are what they are and not because of the relationship to other things. so in this question Socrates is in line with the pre-Socratics because he is saying that we don't need to rely on divine revelation to know what is moral and we can use reason to work it out. and in fact he says that morality must depend on something further and something outside of the will of god. because to say its bad because god commands it doesn't tell us 'why' god doesn't like it.

Socrates conclusion

Socrates concludes that what he calls goodness is an intrinsic property that some actions or persons possess and the virtuous person or the good person is one who knows what that is. and knowing goodness is simply knowing what all good things have in common and is responsible for their being good. to achieve that goal is the most important goal of human life. and that's where this idea of critical self reflection and in order to do that we have to engage in dialogue with other people to help uncover these things which are innate within us discovering these truths via the use of reason.

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